Where the Bunny Hops

Stories? Writing them is what we are here for. To practice the trade and art of putting pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard. Drawing from out of our back brains ideas that other will find worth the time it takes to read.

But where do they come from? What's a good source?

Well life of course. Don't try to draw them from a vacuum. Pull them instead from the dark corners of you mind. The place where you hid that jelly sandwich when you were a kid.

Some people will say 'well that's easy to say'.

Okay. I'll give an example. In 1975 my mother was dating a guy and broke up with him when she met someone she liked better. A man that became my stepfather till I was 12.

The man she broke up with took exception to this, got some of his friends together, and decided to run my mom's new boyfriend off the road and beat him up. The problem was that the night they tried this on my Mom's car wasn't running right. Something with the brakes if I remember.

So my Mom and me were in his car and he was in hers. The old boyfriend ran my Mom and me off the road into a ditch. I still remember getting thrown into the dashboard when he rammed the back of the car I was in with his car! It was before the days of baby seat. I was only four years old at the time.

My step dad, to be, skidded to a stop jumped out the car and ran back to check on us. That's when Mom's old boy friend jumped him.

My mom grabbed me up, ran to her car, and drove back home like mad. She ran inside told my grand father what was happening and off he and my two uncles went then to stop the fight.

The story that came back to me was that my grandfather stepped out his truck and unloaded a 357 into the trunk of their car!

So what does this have to do with stories? I've just given you one of the main scenes from my story "It's complicated part 2" I need a confrontation between the main character and her old boy friend and it was right there in my memories just perfect for the story.

Then you have the man that she married and latter divorced when I was 12. He has a younger sister that I fell in love with but never did anything about. Well what if I had? That what I wrote about in the first part of that story series.

Two little moments of my own past and boom, Two of my very highest scored stories.

So your own memories are a good source.

What's another?

Look inside yourself and find the things that you are passionate about. They make for great plot bunnies if you feed them enough carrots and lettuce.

I feel very strongly about the homeless, I love the sound of a cello and I think chubby women are sexy as hell. That almost the whole plot for the story "Heart strings." That and a coffee commercial was the inspiration.

I love the tall sailing ships of the past and the modern ones as well. The women of the south pacific have an exotic dark beauty and innocence to them that I find sexy. The story I wrote called 'Aurora.' is nothing more or less than those two things put into a story with a very simple main character.

Okay well let's say you have lived under a rock for your whole life, don't have a lot of memories, and don't feel passionate about anything. I won't believe it for a moment but lets just suppose you that person.

Talk to others around you. I promise someone's done something that worth writing a story about that you know. You might, given that we write erotica, not tell them the character is them...maybe you might not want then to read it at all.

A guy I work with got thrown out his house by his girl friend. Yea I wrote that right. His girlfriend threw him out his own house! He ended up sleeping by a 55 gallon drum with a fire burning in it that night to keep warm. The people in the neighborhood gather there to play dominoes and cards, drink and swap bullshit stories all night long so he was safe enough.

Now I haven't made a story from that yet but I can hear it screaming Write me!

Also it may be a bit of a strange conversation but talk to someone of the older generations about their sex life when they were your age, or younger. They can give you an earful that will fill pages of Lit story space. Theirs was the sexual revolution generation, the pre-hippie days of leather coats and making out in the back of cars. The, I'm home from the war with something soap and water wont wash off what do I do now type stories.

The best things you can write about are also the worst things. Don't go looking for sunshine and flowers. How about a story set in the Jewish ghetto of Warsaw Poland in the time of the German occupation. Maybe brother/sister incest story? Wow talk about a powerful story you could write there. Beats the hell out of trapped in a snowed in cabin with your sister. Yet it's almost the same story. Family not there, scared, dangerous outside, needing comfort.

Same story different setting, much more powerful read.

We have a tendency to repeat as writers what got us acclaim before. There is nothing wrong with that. Even the big named writers do the same kind of thing. They write what sells. Well we're not getting paid here but we write what gets us votes.

You can't be fired!

Try something new. Maybe not every story you write has to be off the wall different from what you do as your norms but give it a try. Find a topic that you know noting about. Do a bit of research; dig up a moment from your own past or someone elses. Add a bit of passion about what ever gets your heart pumping. Throw all this together with a hot sex scene, or two or four and who knows. You might just have a story that's interesting to the person that doesn't have their dick in their hand when they're reading.

If your favorite category is incest and you write mother son stories mostly...well it's not that much of a stretch to write a mature story. If you can do a mature with some feeling in it above the waistline that's a romance. Maybe instead of son/ mom try mother/ daughter. Then older woman, younger woman mature. Then your drop a few years and your writing lesbian lovers.

Now was that such a stretch? Sure your not wring about a cross-dressing gay black guy getting used without his consent while his wife watches and it's being filmed by a famous movie star but it's a start.

Lord if that wouldn't be a story there. Lol.

You're a self-employed writer and not making a dime here with your stories. You're giving them away for free. That's fine. Some of the best writer didn't get rich. You just have to remember something. There is no Complaints Department except to yourself

I can't find my Muse?

Did you leave it in your other pants?

I've got writer's block!

Try prune juice. Maybe the time on the toilet thinking will help you get some ideas. If nothing else the lessening of pressure on your brain might help!

Get angry! Get mad as hell about something. Write about it. The Westwood Baptist church pisses me off! I want to write a non-consent style celebrity story where Fred Phelps gets gang banged by a gay motorcycle club while protesting a military funeral.

Find what gets you hot under the collar and write about it. You will never have a better source of story fodder than that. Yea you may make some people not like you but are you being paid to be liked? Hell you're not even being paid!

Well if your not being paid why are you doing it? To write better? To entertain? To please your fans? To have fun?

Well of course it's all of those and many more. So right now the only person that can tell you what to write is you, (and an Anon that doesn't like what your doing anyway) Change it up. Push your comfort zone to the edge then jump. What's the worst you can have happen? You have a story in your list that has a bad score? You never know it could turn out to be your biggest hit!

And don't just look for stories ideas in what you like.

In you normal day to day life your, lets say, a Lesbian. The idea of writing a story with a guy girl scene turns your stomach a bit. Okay.

How about a Loving Wives story where the wife is cheating on her husband with another woman? You would see the flames from that one in space!

Gay man writing a straight story? Do it from the girl's point of view. You have an inside track on what it's like to give a man oral sex. I have to wrap my head around a lamp post to try to figure that one out and you know what it's like from your own sex life. You know what attracts you to a man, a woman probably feel very similar feelings. Use that knowledge to make you stories better. You also know probably more about anal sex than most straight writers can imagine.

There will always be those story ideas that someone wont like. There will be the ones that get you commented out of one category and into another. Well okay, that's fine. You're not running for election. They can't stop you from writing a single word let alone a hundred stories. Have a good time. Piss someone off if that's your thrill.

Hone your skills as a writer. Keep an idea's book in your pocket with a little pencil stub. Jot down the ideas when they come. Anything at all. See a TV commercial use that. A bill board on the side of the road.(don't do it while driving) A plot from a bit of someone elses conversation that made you think, what if.

Still no ideas? Okay well lets look into the past.

History is a million stories that you can take bit and pieces from to your hearts content. Hell maybe not even a bad source for a celebrities story. A little bit of fact some of the greatest painters used prostitutes as models for nude paintings. I can smell more than oil paints there.

The only, if you want to call it that, obstacle to that type of story is the amount of research you have to do to make it accurate.

Or do you? Take the idea and make it modern. A struggling painter hires a hooker for the night to model for him. He's a virgin who's never seen a woman naked. She offers to help relieve some of his nervous tension. Why not he's already paid her.

You can find some good ideas even by looking through the story log here on Lit. Just taking an idea from a writer isn't plagiarism. Hell a famous writer once said there are no new stories just retelling of old ones. Need an idea for cross-dressing? Read you about ten or twenty of the stories on here. A strange way of spending an afternoon admittedly but you couldn't help but find your story idea in there somewhere.

Finally the closest source for ideas you would find would be the sites own Story Ideas forum. There are people on there begging someone to write this or that type of story.

Using the same idea again and again may give you more of a following. They will know that they can read just the type of story they like in everyone of your works. You will have a large group singing your praises. But will you be improving your ability as a write? A little maybe. But not to the extent that you could be.

So chase that white rabbit down the rabbit hole. See just how far down it goes. You could very well find yourself with the best story you every wrote.